


the holding of hands, the breaking of glass

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Time Travel, days of future past, specifically the comics DoFP from 1980, the product of a long and passionate hate affair with the dofp movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22181530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: When Kate Pryde goes back in time to save the world, Kitty wakes up in a nightmare full of ruined cities, friends she doesn't recognize, and loss.  All she has to do is live long enough to get home.  Unfortunately, not everything is that simple.
Relationships: Kitty Pryde & Rachel Summers, Kitty Pryde/Piotr Rasputin, Ororo Munroe & Kitty Pryde
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	the holding of hands, the breaking of glass

**Author's Note:**

> I just. Hate the DoFP movie _so_ unbelievably much. I reread the comics last week and spent three days complaining to everyone I spoke to about how much I wanted a DoFP adaptation that keeps Kitty as the main character and (in my heart of hearts) includes the fact that Kate Pryde is _canonically married_ to her version of Piotr, and then I stopped bothering my partners and wrote this fic. 
> 
> Someone let me adapt a movie. I would make a good DoFP movie.
> 
> **Note:** this fic uses exclusively comics canon, to the extent that I lifted certain dialogue directly, but I'm not religious with it and filled in a lot of blanks about the DoFP timeline. That being said, you'll probably be fine even if you haven't read it. Kate is back in time stopping the assassination of Robert Kelly, it goes fine. Kitty almost died stumbling into the Danger Room the morning of the time travel event, she's a _very_ new X-Man and hasn't even been on a mission yet, all versions of Piotr worry about her constantly. There you go, now you're caught up.

Kitty stirs awake on an uncomfortably hard surface, feeling a little like she’s fallen down the world’s longest flight of stairs. Is this how she’s going to feel after every Danger Room session? She’s felt worse, but good lord. If this is how she feels after walking straight through every obstacle, she doesn’t want to think about how she’d feel otherwise. Every bone aches the moment she moves, and she has a pounding ache in her jaw like she’s been punched. Hard.

Someone’s hands are resting on her temples, and Kitty pushes them away blindly.

“She’s awake,” an unfamiliar voice says from just behind her head. It sounds like a woman, and she does _not_ sound happy. “Shit.”

“Can you put her back to sleep?” another voice asks, lightly accented, quiet. 

“No,” Kitty mutters, putting a hand up as if it might help and opening her eyes. Sitting up makes her back crack, and there’s a dull, tight pain in her neck that she tries to stretch out, but something’s in the way. Metal—a collar?

Kitty’s brain comes online all at once.

She’s sitting on a mat stretched over cement, in what looks like a blasted husk of a building. There’s a large crack in the wall that spills sunlight onto the floor, enough light to look around. There’s not much to see—a large room, and six people looking at her with expressions she can’t really parse. There’s a man with blonde hair, sitting on the ground next to a device the size of a pasta pot, and an older man with tired eyes and thick white hair in a wheelchair. They both look alert but almost disinterested in Kitty, and she mentally classes them as nonthreatening and moves on to the others, who are watching her like hawks.

The woman sitting cross-legged behind the thin mat has brilliantly red hair cropped to an inch or two of fluff, and she’s looking at Kitty like she’s considering trying to force her to lie back down. Kitty doesn’t know her, but there’s something—the shape of her jaw, maybe, or the way those pale eyes stare into Kitty’s without hesitation—that’s jarringly familiar. 

The other three, though, there’s no way Kitty couldn’t recognize them.

“Ororo,” Kitty says, and her voice doesn’t sound quite right as it trembles nervously over the vowels. “What’s going on?”

Ororo still looks like herself, impossible to mistake that hair and those lightning-blue eyes on the smooth darkness of Ororo’s skin, but there’s a hardness around her mouth and lines around her eyes that weren’t there this morning, when she was scolding Kitty for getting into trouble. Her hair’s been hacked off unevenly at her shoulders, and she doesn’t stand with the same grace as before. She stands tensely, arms crossed, and it takes a moment for her to come toward Kitty.

“Kate—Kitty—I know you must be afraid,” Ororo says. She kneels down next to the mat, and she moves like it hurts her. “What’s the last thing you remember, Kitty?”

“I was in the Danger Room,” Kitty says. Part of her wants to throw herself into Ororo’s arms, like a kid after a nightmare, but something holds her back. This Ororo isn’t the warm, laughing woman that Kitty met in Deerfield, nor the stubborn prisoner from the Hellfire Club—for the first time since Kitty met her, Ororo’s eyes are cold. She’s not sure this woman would take well to being hugged. “I’d just done my first run through it. I thought it was fine, but then there was this white light, and I saw—I don’t know. And then I was here.”

“Well, at least we know Rachel’s aim is good,” says the figure guarding the door in grim amusement. At least Logan still looks the same, except for some silver in his hair. Kitty thinks she might have even seen him in that coat last week, or at least a beaten leather thing so similar in cut and hard knocks that it would be interchangeable. “Hey, kid,” he says with a nod to Kitty. “Long time, no see.”

“Logan,” Ororo says repressively.

“Hey, I said we should have a way to break the news nice and easy, but you said she’d be unconscious. She ain’t. Gotta tell her eventually.” Logan steps a little closer. “Kid, this ain’t gonna be fun to hear, but that was thirty-three years ago.”

“That’s impossible,” Kitty says immediately, but she can’t even make herself believe it.

Because, see, the last person in the room is some six and a half feet tall and so broad shouldered that his attempt to seem unassuming was doomed from the start, and the only person Kitty knows who’s that tall and that determined to seem otherwise is Piotr Rasputin. He’s older, with silver threading his ink-black hair and worry lines drawn on his forehead, the lines of his face gone sharp like he hasn’t been eating enough in a long time. He’s got his back to one of the intact walls, arms folded across his chest, and he’s watching Kitty even more closely than Ororo.

He looks—sad. She can’t really put a finger on _what_ the hell he’s feeling, from looking at his face. But he sure looks three decades older.

The redhead—Rachel, Kitty’s guessing, by sheer process of elimination—is talking, and Kitty blinks, tries to follow what she’s saying.

“—switched you with your future self,” Rachel says. “By sending her consciousness—Kate’s consciousness—back into your body that day, I brought you here. Honestly we were kind of hoping you’d sleep through it.”

“ _Why_?” Kitty demands. “Why was it so important to send her—me—whichever? What’s going on?”

Rachel reaches out, and Kitty slides back. It’s not intentional. Rachel looks like she’s been slapped anyway.

“Our time…” Ororo says, shaking her head. “Our present, your future, is not a good one. We think we’ve found the moment where it went wrong, and Kate agreed to try to fix it. You’re in her body while Rachel keeps her in the past. Hopefully, she will be successful, and this will all be like a strange nightmare.”

“What happened?” It’s not, maybe, the most relevant question Kitty’s ever thought of. But she can’t imagine what made Ororo so stern, or what made Piotr so sad. 

“A lot,” Logan says dryly. “But mostly, paranoia.”

For the first time, Piotr moves from his tense pose by the wall, and when he uncrosses his arms, Kitty sees what she’d missed on the strangely uniform clothes around her. There’s a black M on Piotr’s chest, over his heart, and now that she’s looking for it, she realizes that Ororo and Rachel’s jumpsuits have them too, hidden by the way they’ve folded the top halves down to show black undershirts. The blonde man, the man in the wheelchair, even Kitty herself.

“Mutants are not—people, in our time,” Piotr says quietly, watching Kitty. No one interrupts him. “At first it was a registry, for everyone’s safety, they said. Then it was laws about having children. Now there are not many of us left.”

Ice washes down Kitty’s spine, and she hears her mouth ask, “Where are the others? The other X-Men, the professor?”

Piotr takes an aborted step forward, then falls back against the wall again like he can’t get any closer to her, like he doesn’t dare to close the space. “I am sorry, Katya,” he tells her. He doesn’t say anything else—he doesn’t need to. She can read it all over his face.

Gone? Dead? She hasn’t known them long, no more than a handful of months, but Kitty can’t imagine a world where the X-Men aren’t, at least, _there_. Somewhere, in the wider world, under the fond hand of the professor. God, she flinched away from Kurt just this morning. She’d give anything, right now, to see his point-toothed grin and hear him tease her.

Kitty doesn’t want to know about this future. She closes her eyes and presses both palms to her face and tries to get air into her lungs, swallows and feels the metal around her neck clutch at her throat. She realizes, in a clinical kind of way, that she may be having a panic attack.

“I can’t breathe,” she mutters, fumbling at her throat. She doesn’t know what the collar is, but she wants it _off_ , can’t really think about anything just now except how _much_ she wants it off. She feels the pins-and-needles sensation of circuits shorting through her hand before she realizes she’s managed to shove her fingers straight through the metal and into her own throat. When she pulls her hand away, the collar clicks and falls to the mat.

Kitty sits there, one hand pressed to her throat and the other clamped hard over her mouth, and stares at it for a long few moments. There’s a stir going through the others, but she’s too busy trying to make her vision clear of black dots to hear it.

“Kitty?” Ororo asks. It’s strange. Ororo always calls her _kitten_ , except when Kitty’s in trouble. It’s strange, to hear how careful she sounds now. “If you can walk, we need to keep moving.”

“Kate’s hurt,” Kitty says numbly into her palm. She’s older, yes, but that doesn’t account for the aching. Now that she’s sitting up, she can tell that it’s more than her jaw. Her ankle throbs, it’s been twisted. Her back hurts, she landed hard on something. The collar has an indicator light on it that’s blacked out now, and Kitty can’t peel her eyes off it. “Why is—what happened? I don’t _get_ hurt, I _can’t_ , it’s—it’s all I can _do_ , is not get hurt.”

“Little bit of a scuffle earlier,” Logan says. “Nothing serious.”

It’s Rachel who clears her throat and says, “It’s the collars, Kitty. They inhibit mutant abilities. Franklin built this signal jammer—with you, actually—but it won’t work once we leave this room. Can you get the rest of us out before then?”

“Where are we going?” Kitty doesn’t care. She doesn’t know enough to care. She wants a hug so badly that her chest is aching worse than any of her bruises. She wants Ororo’s hand on her hair telling her it’ll be all right, she wants Logan to clap her on the back and give her a friendly shake, she wants to be back in the Danger Room where Piotr can catch her and make everything okay for a few seconds.

“Away from here,” the man in the wheelchair says. He has a very faint German accent, one that only shows through on his R’s, like it’s been a long time since he was home, and he looks at the room like he’s already looking at an old photograph of people long gone. “I’m afraid it’s quite dangerous to be out in a group like this, Katherine. The five of you will need to keep moving, until your future self is finished with her task.”

“Who are you?” It’s rude, but a small smile flickers over his face at the question.

“I don’t believe you’ve met me yet. Nearly everyone calls me Magnus, these days. It’s a pleasure to meet you again. And this is Franklin Richards.”

“Hi,” Franklin says with a tense smile. Kitty opens her mouth and he’s already nodding. “Yeah, like the Fantastic Four. All mutants are pretty much the same when you get right down to it, whether you got your powers from a space accident or not. My family made it longer than most, but.” He shrugs, like it’s old news.

“I’m—sorry,” Kitty says, and God, she really is.

“We’re working on it,” Franklin says, tapping his jammer with a careful finger. 

“Indeed we are,” Ororo says. “Kitty, if you can get the collars off the rest of us, we can get moving. Magnus--”

“No, Ororo.” The old man sounds kind, but absolutely beyond negotiating. It’s a little shocking, how much he reminds Kitty of Professor Xavier. “Even with my abilities, I could not keep up with you. I won’t endanger this gamble for my sake.” He makes a motion with his fingers, as if breaking something fragile between them, and his collar simply cracks clean down one of the metal joints. “I will buy you time to run. The Sentinels still have a great many metal parts.”

Kitty wants to be sick. Sentinels—it’s been a while since they were in the public eye, but the idea of those things with three additional decades of development is terrifying. And now they expect her to _leave_ someone to them?

Between them, Kitty and Magnus have all the collars off in less than a minute. Piotr’s last, because he hasn’t _moved_ —he’s still lingering maybe ten feet from Kitty—and Magnus hasn’t made any effort to deal with his collar. Kitty’s still trying not to hyperventilate herself into unconsciousness, but she thinks Magnus is making some kind of point, because he _could_ get Piotr out without moving at all and hasn’t.

“Peter,” Kitty finally says, wavering to her feet and gesturing to him, “come here.”

She takes a step toward him and that turned ankle tries to roll in her work boots, and then he’s there, like magic, like he’s picked up teleportation in the last thirty-three years, gripping her arm and holding her up.

“Careful,” he says.

“Thanks,” Kitty says faintly. “Here, bend down. This might feel kind of weird.” He lowers his head and she puts her hand through the collar around his neck, electricity popping and dying through her. Piotr doesn’t even flinch at the sensation of her fingers entering his neck, and Kitty wonders for a moment why he didn’t just armor up and burst the collar. Then she realizes that he’s probably wearing the only clothes he owns.

“Thank you,” Piotr says as his collar clicks, and he reaches up and just _pulls_ , and there’s a whine of the hinges as the disabled lock comes clean apart. He drops it mangled on the ground, and for a moment Kitty thinks he’ll stay beside her, so that she can hold onto his arm, like he did when she was shaky and terrified outside the Hellfire Club. But he doesn’t.

“All right,” Ororo says. “Can you walk, Kitty?”

“Yes,” Kitty says. It hurts, putting weight on her foot, but not badly. Even if it was broken beyond moving, she can’t imagine telling these iron-spined people that she needs to be carried.

There’s a moment of silence, of Ororo rising to her feet and Logan shaking Magnus’ hand, of Franklin giving his jammer a last touch, as if saying goodbye to a loyal pet. Rachel’s the last to rise, because instead she stays kneeling on the ground, watching Piotr with narrowed eyes as he looks fixedly at the opposite wall. Kitty knows the expression—Rachel’s a telepath, then, and Piotr is trying to ignore her.

She sees Piotr’s lips press together a moment before Rachel bounces to her feet and says, “Right! We’re going. Kitty, you stay with Pete, and Ororo and Logan will take point.”

“Okay,” Kitty agrees.

They leave Magnus behind. He looks absolutely fearless. Kitty wishes he could share some of that courage with her.

* * *

Piotr walks between Kitty and the street when they’re in the open, keeping her caged safe against the wall. It’s awkward—ridiculous, to focus on that when Kitty is surrounded by the gutted ruin of Manhattan, but it is. If she thinks too hard about the city around her, buildings she gaped at like a tourist her first time there reduced to rubble, the skyline ripped down or skeletonized in more places than it’s remained, she might never be able to keep her breathing under control. She can’t imagine that Kate is immune either. Even watching this transformation in real time must never really have sunk in.

So she thinks about how quiet and unsure Piotr is, instead. Rachel is uncertain too, but that makes a little more sense—Kitty doesn’t know her, but she’s clearly close with Kate. Piotr, though, he was teasing her about getting in trouble just this morning, cheering her success in the Danger Room. They’re friends.

At least, Kitty _thought_ they were friends.

It’s not until they hear an explosion behind them, screaming metal and crumbling concrete, that Piotr finally speaks.

He’s got her crowded against the wall, hidden behind his broad shoulders so that no one can reach her without going through him, and he says, “Katya—Kitty. If the Sentinels find us, jump through the wall and run, all right? One of us will find you.”

“I’m not _leaving_ you,” Kitty hisses back, a bubble of outrage rising through her fear to the surface. Piotr makes a noise that’s almost like a laugh, or possibly like he’s been sucker punched by the Thing.

“Just run if you need to, Katya.”

“Magnus is holding them off,” Ororo says sharply. “We need to get out of the main streets.”

“This way,” Logan says, and leads them through such a dizzying maze of twists and turns that Kitty loses her bearings almost immediately. She’s only been in Manhattan three times, outside of when her plane from Deerfield touched down and Ororo met her at the airport, and the surviving street signs mean nothing to her. She sees some buildings she recognizes, stripped to steel beams, but most are strange to her. If she got lost, she’s sure she would have no hope of finding her way back to the others before a Sentinel found her. All she can really do is follow Logan and try to keep Piotr by her side, and hope that Kate comes back soon.

It’s quieter in the alleys and ripped-open subway tunnels that Logan leads them through, and they move a little more slowly. They’ve been walking an hour, maybe more, mostly underground, by the time Rachel drifts up to Kitty’s elbow and touches Piotr on the arm.

“Can I talk to Kitty for a minute, Pete?”

Piotr looks down at Rachel, his lips thin again. “What about?”

“Just want to make sure she’s okay. Go on, walk with Ororo. It’ll be fine.”

There’s a whole other conversation happening here, one that Kitty isn’t privy to—she can’t tell if it’s telepathic or just in expression and subtext, but she can all but see it hanging in the air. After a long moment, Piotr nods, and looks back to Kitty.

“I won’t be far,” he says, and she can’t help but feel a little reassured. “Call if you—just call for me.”

Piotr doesn’t need to do more than lengthen his stride in order to outstrip Kitty and Rachel, taking a few long steps to reach Ororo and Logan ahead of them. He’s not quite out of earshot and Kitty thinks it’s intentional, keeping tabs on Rachel, because—

Whatever the argument happening, just out of sight, has been, it’s about how much Kitty gets told. She’s sure of it now. Her first thought is unkind and full of fear: maybe they’re not sure she can go back. Maybe they brought her here _knowing_ she couldn’t go back. Maybe she’s trapped in this future, forever, and Kate has replaced her for good, and they did it to her on purpose, decided that she was an acceptable loss for the sake of trying to fix the world.

The worst part is that, if it works and this _nightmare_ vanishes and takes Kitty with it, she’s not even sure they will have been wrong. She’s only thirteen, almost fourteen, and she doesn’t want to die. But she doesn’t want this to be her world, either.

“We—oh, Kitty,” Rachel says, and it’s the most feeling she’s shown since Kitty met her. She sounds crushed. Kitty could kick herself for letting her mind run away with her next to a telepath. “We would never—we’re sure you can go back. As long as you and Kate are still alive, you should switch back without any trouble.”

“I didn’t mean--”

Rachel gives her a crooked smile and knocks on her own temple with a knuckle. “Haven’t had to control my powers in a while. Sorry. I know what you meant. You don’t know me, but seriously, I wouldn’t trap you here. If nothing else, Pete and Ororo would fight over who got to kill me, if I did.”

“I’m—sorry,” Kitty says. It sounds uselessly small, echoing through what used to be Lexington Avenue Station, and Rachel’s smile twists a little further. “You and her—you and I—we’re friends?”

“Best friends,” Rachel agrees. “I can’t tell you too much, but we’ve been friends a long time.”

“Timeline stuff,” Kitty says with a frown. “You don’t want to tell me anything so that I don’t change anything that shouldn’t be changed. But if Kate’s going back to change things anyway, on purpose, knowing things shouldn’t be a problem, right? I’ll be living a different timeline.”

“You and Franklin should talk quantum physics at some point,” Rachel says dryly. “He’s been dying to play Time Travel Bingo with someone ever since we started talking about this plan and made him stop telling us useless information. We’re not trying to control you or anything, it’s just…” Rachel trails off and glances at the trio in front of them, Logan ranging out deeper into the tunnels while Ororo and Piotr talk in hushed tones. Mostly Ororo talking, Kitty notices, with her hand on Piotr’s upper arm. Rachel lets out a soft sigh and says, “It’s hard to explain. We want you to live your life. We want to be in it. Me, I think you’ll have more fun if you don’t have a sneak preview of our friendship. Some people, they think it’ll freak you out to hear too much.”

That sounds…pointed. Kitty opens her mouth, but Rachel is already shaking her head.

“Sorry, kid. I promised to keep my mouth shut. You know how it is.”

Kitty can’t say she actually does know how it is, but she lets out a breath and doesn’t press the point.

“What’s Kate doing?” she asks, for lack of other options. If she’s not allowed to ask about Rachel or the others or _herself_ , she might as well try and figure out what’s going on. “In the past? What causes all of this?” Rachel hesitates and Kitty tries not to grind her teeth. Can’t give Kate her body back with a headache—a worse headache, anyway.

Assuming Kate even makes it back to worry about petty things like headaches. 

Kitty forcibly peels her thoughts away from that question before she can start hyperventilating again and tries to pay attention to what Rachel is saying. Something about stopping the assassination of an anti-mutant politician at the hands of the Brotherhood. 

“So,” Kitty says when Rachel stops, “if this Kelly guy dying is what kicks off all this, what happens to you—us, I guess—if Kate stops that timeline from existing?”

Rachel opens her mouth to answer, and then her head snaps up, like a hunting hound hearing a whistle, while Logan comes to a stop. She grabs Kitty’s sleeve and catches an eye, holds a finger to her lips, and Kitty stops breathing.

_//They’re coming,//_ Rachel’s voice says into Kitty’s mind. _//Don’t talk, and run when I say. Piotr will get you out.//_

Kitty wants to shout at her, wants to demand what that _means_ , why Piotr is ready to sacrifice Logan, his friend, and Ororo, his _sister_ in all but blood, for her, wants to demand how Rachel expects Kitty to turn her back on these people.

Rachel’s eyes are a hard, bright grey, like steel, in the light bleeding through the cracked cement walls, and Kitty should know them. There’s something unbearably familiar about the woman like this, when she’s barking orders, in the firm set of her shoulders and the fearless tip of her jaw. She’s a leader, quick to make the judgement call when she needs to, and it reminds Kitty a little of Scott, for the handful of minutes she knew him.

Kitty doesn’t argue, just nods. Piotr is already reaching for her, pushing her in front of him, ready to grab her, and then—

The wall comes down with a shattering boom of concrete, and everything goes to hell.

“Katya, _go_!” Piotr shouts, and Kitty _runs_. The ground shakes underfoot, and the part of her that’s still a normal thirteen-year-old from Deerfield shrieks something about being in a subway tunnel during an earthquake, but Kitty ignores her. She’s a mutant. She’s an X-Man, for God’s sake. She keeps half an eye on the concrete overhead, watching for falling cement, and runs without looking back. 

Someone behind her _screams_ , like a soul being ripped out through flesh. It’s Rachel.

An armored hand catches Kitty’s when she hesitates, half-turned, and she has to keep going or be dragged. 

“Ororo,” Piotr says, “ _hide us_.”

“Take Kate,” Ororo snaps.

“I’m sorry,” Piotr tells Kitty as they sprint down the tunnel. Kitty’s about to pant out a question, and then she’s swept up in Piotr’s arms. He curls her to his chest like he knows exactly how to keep a secure grip without limiting his movement too much, and Kitty grabs him around the neck on instinct. She can just see over his shoulder, past Logan running behind them, as Ororo stops dead and turns back, throwing out her hands. White mist billows, going from a smoky wisp to a fog thick enough to cut up and wring out for water in a matter of moments.

Beyond the fog, there’s the scream of tortured metal, and a brilliant flash of light, a fire starting and retreating to a point of light. Piotr runs _fast_ when he doesn’t need to wait for anyone, fast enough that Kitty quickly loses sight of Logan and Ororo, fast enough that they leave the fog behind and are alone in the dark of the tunnels.

When Piotr finally slows to a stop, in a tunnel only barely lit enough to see the walls by dying chemical lamps, Kitty is clinging to the torn scraps of his jumpsuit shirt and breathless from the jolting run.

“Are you all right?” Piotr asks, and Kitty gives a semi-hysterical giggle, patting absently at his shoulder, where the cool steel is warm from having her pressed against it.

“Your suspension leaves a lot to be desired, Pete.” She’s not sure where the joke comes from, except that if she answers that question with anything resembling honesty she thinks she might start sobbing. She can’t start crying right now. She can cry if she ever makes it back to her own time.

To her surprise, Piotr makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. “So you keep telling me.”

Nice to know that he’s friendly with Kate, at least, even if he’s treating Kitty like she has the plague. “Where are the others?”

“They will catch up. One tunnel is as good as another, Logan will find us.”

Kitty swallows hard, and she’s glad that Piotr is still holding her, absentminded, as if he’s forgotten her weight. She’s pretty sure that her knees might give out on her, asking her next question.

“And if they don’t?”

Piotr lets out a breath. “Rachel isn’t dead. If she were, you would be back in your own time, and Kate would be--” He stops. This time, unlike his other aborted sentences, Kitty is close enough that she can feel the short hitch in his breathing. “Rachel will find us. We simply keep walking until we reach a station, and I’ll get us out.”

“Sentinels…” The word slips out, shaky, terrified. This world wants Kitty dead for the sin of living, and there’s no one she can go to for help. She’s relieved that Kate hasn’t eaten in a while, or she thinks she might throw up. 

“Sentinels,” Piotr agrees, in the same way he said _I, also_ , when she admitted to being afraid in the Danger Room that morning. “But I have you.”

“Yeah,” Kitty says. “I—yeah.”

Piotr starts walking again, an easy long stride that feels as if he’s planning to keep it up all day if he has to. It’s a smoother ride than before, and Kitty drops her head wearily to his shoulder, feeling a fresh desire to burst into tears. She’s so tired. She wishes she hadn’t said anything when she woke up, that she’d let Rachel put her back to sleep.

“Peter,” she says, when the silence presses so strongly on her ears and chest that she thinks she’s about to start screaming. Her voice sounds tiny in the echoing cavern of the subway.

“ _Da_?”

“Will you talk to me?”

He hesitates for a moment, and then: “What should I talk about?”

“Anything. It’s just—it’s really quiet.”

“Are you afraid?”

“ _God_ , yeah, I’m afraid,” she laughs, and the sharp bark of it echoes back from the tunnel walls. “I’d be crazy not to be scared, Peter, I’m not—I’m not used to this world.”

Piotr’s arms tighten around her, just a little, so minutely that Kitty might be forgiven for failing to notice. “You are going home, Katya. You don’t need to be used to this world. I hoped…” The shadow of him shakes his head above her, tips down toward her, lifts away again. “It doesn’t matter.”

Kitty waits for a moment, and then decides that she’s more afraid of going back to the silence than of whatever he was about to say. “You hoped what?”

“We thought that you might be unconscious until Kate came back,” Piotr says. “I hoped you would not have to see this world.”

“I’m not that much of a kid, Peter.”

“I am not a kid at all,” Piotr says, with a kind of grim black humor that Kitty’s never heard from him before and never wants to hear from him again. “I would rather not see this world, either. I would rather you have slept through it.”

Kitty doesn’t know what to say to that. She rests her head back on the smooth steel instead of trying to come up with an answer.

“You could sleep now,” Piotr says after a long moment of quiet. “It may be a long day, and I—I wouldn’t mind.”

“I thought maybe you didn’t like me in the future,” Kitty mutters. Piotr laughs for real at that, a short chuckle that shivers through her as it rumbles up from his chest, as if he thinks it’s a great joke. Kitty pulls her head back to peer up at him, but the near-darkness offers no answers.

“Sleep, Katya. Just for a few minutes. I am sure that time travel is exhausting.”

It is. Kitty’s bones feel like they’ve been filled with lead, every breath weighing her down. But she doesn’t want to sleep, not now, with the whole city of Manhattan pressing down over her head and the mystery of Ororo and Logan and even Rachel and Franklin still unsolved. 

“Would you have stayed to fight, if I were still asleep?” The question pops out without Kitty’s permission, and she realizes that she’s closed her eyes. Dragging them open makes them burn.

“Yes,” Piotr says plainly. “If you were asleep, we would not have to think about things like who you might trust enough to run into a dark tunnel alone. I would have left you with Rachel while I brought the ceiling down.”

But Kitty was awake— _Kitty_ , who hadn’t known Rachel more than an hour. If she had been told to abandon the only people in this nightmare who were familiar to her, and go with Rachel, plan unknown, would she have done it? Maybe. But she might have slipped through Rachel’s hands and refused, too. A gamble they hadn’t been willing to take. 

“I’m—sorry,” Kitty says, uncertain if it’s the right sentiment. Piotr seems bitter toward the Sentinels, like he would have enjoyed ripping a few of them limb from limb, and it’s jarringly at odds with the younger version she knows. Piotr has a temper, she’s seen it flare more than once since they met, but he doesn’t do damage for the sake of it. Or rather— _her_ Piotr doesn’t. It feels arrogant to think of him that way, but it’s the only distinction she can come up with. “You really hate them, huh?”

“We all do.” And there it is, the return of the stiff, toneless voice, as if he’s giving a report. Piotr hesitates, and then, as if he’s choosing his words with excruciating care, “The Sentinels killed my family. My sister, and the X-Men.” He takes a breath like he’s going to say something else, but no more words come.

“And?” Kitty keeps her prompt quiet. If he doesn’t answer, she won’t ask again.

“And,” Piotr goes on, reluctantly, “the Sentinels killed my—my children.”

“Oh,” Kitty says. His words aren’t choked, but they sound like they might be, if Piotr weren’t in his armored form. She can’t imagine what that would be like, to lose a child. More than one. She wonders if this awful reality had left the X-Men taking in orphans in a far more literal sense or if they had been Piotr’s children by birth, if they had their father’s blue eyes and superhuman strength, who their mother was. If she had been killed by the Sentinels, too, or maybe captured, put in one of the concentration camps that Ororo had pointed out before they ducked underground.

She can’t imagine a more unwelcome question, and so she whispers, “I’m so sorry, Peter. I had no idea.”

“No,” he says. There’s a weird tone that’s crept into his voice, still so unutterably grim that it’s beyond tears, but a bit—wry? That can’t be right. “You wouldn’t have known. But yes, Katya. I hate the Sentinels very much.”

“I hope Kate fixes this,” Kitty murmurs. “And when did you start calling me Katya, anyway? What does it mean?”

“It—I am sorry,” Piotr says, his steps coming up sharply. “I didn’t think—I forgot that you wouldn’t be used to it. I can stop.”

“No,” Kitty says quickly. Probably too quickly, transparently quick, but it’s—comforting. Piotr, her Piotr, is so careful with her all the time, even in a fight. Whenever she’s falling, he catches her in his human form so that he doesn’t bruise her too badly, for God’s sake, it’s probably the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for her. This Piotr doesn’t have the same luxury of gentleness, but the way he says the nickname, soft and accented, makes her feel like that version of him isn’t quite so far away. It’s not anything her Piotr has ever called her, but it feels like a bit of home. “It’s fine. I—I like it.”

Piotr doesn’t say anything to that, just holds her a little closer and walks on.

* * *

Kitty thinks she dozes, although it’s hard to tell in the tunnel. Time blurs a bit, and she can’t quite pinpoint when she first hears steps behind them. But Piotr stops, turns, and that catches her attention enough to straighten up in his arms, as three shadows become clear in the daylight creeping through a handful of damaged ventilation grates some distance away.

“You’re okay,” Kitty says, and phases straight through Piotr’s arms to throw herself thoughtlessly at the first available person. It’s Logan, who stiffens when she grabs him. Somewhat to her surprise, though, he slowly wraps his arms around her in return. Logan gives a good hug, she discovers, warm and all-encompassing even though Kate is taller than him by a couple inches, the weight of his hands on her back solid and reassuring. She has to let go of him before she starts sniffling into the steady wall of his shoulder, but she makes a mental note to try a hug on her Logan, eventually.

The next person she grabs for is Ororo, who gives Kitty a short, fierce hug that hurts her bruises with the strength of it and feels so blessedly good that Kitty doesn’t even mind.

And then Ororo lets go and Kitty turns to the last person, and she finds Rachel standing there alone, with tear tracks glinting in the dim light. Franklin isn’t with them.

“Oh, God, Rachel,” Kitty says, and then Rachel is in her arms and crying in awful, silent sobs that feel fit to crack her in half. Kitty wraps her arms around Rachel’s waist as tightly as she can manage and plants her feet and stands solid. This world is a nightmare for her and she’s been here not even a day. As long as it’s not going to get them all killed, she’s going to give Rachel a second to cry over someone she’s lost.

“Sorry,” Rachel says once she’s recovered her breath. Her voice sounds absolutely ravaged. “Sorry, you don’t even—you barely know me.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Kitty says, keeping a grip on Rachel’s jumpsuit as the woman tries to pull away. She gives Rachel a final squeeze, just to prove her point, and the other woman’s lips tip up, just slightly. “What now?”

“Now we go where they would not expect us,” Ororo says, arms crossed. “And try to buy time.”

Kitty has watched every news story and read every article in the Deerfield Library archives about the X-Men, since the Hellfire Club, and even by those standards, this is the riskiest plan she’s ever heard in her life.

The plan is as simple as it is deadly. Logan’s logic is immaculate. Rachel is one of the most powerful mutants left living, and they need to draw attention away from her for long enough to let Kate fix whatever she’s fixing. Kitty realizes, when Rachel admits quietly that Franklin was probably masking her power signature with her own, that she never saw the man use his abilities—Kitty imagined that he was a technopath, or maybe something small, some nothing ability that marked him for death.

The idea that the world has fallen so far into ruin that a _reality warper_ could die at the Sentinels’ hands makes Kitty queasy with fear.

“So,” Logan says gruffly, covering for Kitty’s shock and Rachel’s grief, “we hit their nerve center—the Baxter Building.”

“ _No_ ,” Kitty says, thoughtless. “You can’t. They’ll—you _can’t_.”

“Katya,” Piotr says, a low rumble, not really a warning. He sounds resigned, like he’s used to this. She wishes she’d used their time alone to press him for information, and to hell with the timeline—what the hell is Kate _doing_ in this future, to make Piotr so jumpy around Kitty and yet so familiar when he’s not really paying attention?

“Don’t ‘Katya’ me,” Kitty snaps, and a strange ripple goes through all four of them, the others glancing at Piotr with a rueful look on their faces. “You can’t just throw yourselves at the Sentinels’ home base, you’ll _die_!”

“We may succeed first,” Ororo says. “We can’t hope for help from Logan’s comrades in Canada—we would never make it out of the city without being seen by a patrol.”

“Also,” Rachel volunteers in her ragged voice, “we’re all technically fugitives.”

“Yeah, I sort of broke them out of the South Bronx camp,” Logan admits with a distinct note of satisfaction. “Trashed a helluva lot of Sentinels in the process. We’re what they call ‘high value targets’ just now. We hit the Baxter Building while they’re out sweeping the city for us, we’ll keep them off you two, and while we’re at it, we might be able to hamstring their operation across half the continent, if we’re lucky.”

“But--”

“Kitty,” Ororo says, and it’s as kind as Kitty has heard her since waking up. “Kitten. We are already dead, in this city.” 

There’s just nothing to say to that. Kitty feels a vast, cold hole open in her chest, and whatever happens to her face, it must give her away, because Piotr says quietly, “Ororo.” He reaches out to Kitty, his heavy steel hand touching her shoulder for a moment, featherlight, and then he pulls back, steps away, like he’s crossed a line.

_We are already dead_ , Ororo said, and Kitty—Kitty believes her. Kitty believes that they feel that. Piotr, with his dead children. Logan, the last free X-Man, who risked everything for a desperate gamble. Rachel, who lost Franklin in the scramble for a fix that may not even spare them. And Ororo, the biggest heart Kitty’s ever met, who lost everyone in a slow, awful grind.

“I’m coming with you, then,” Kitty hears herself say, as if from a million miles away. She feels dizzy. Her vision is spotted black, the dim light of the tunnel bursting like a flashbang as her sight clears in places. She feels like she’s about to fall through the floor.

“No,” Piotr says. His sharp voice cuts through the ringing in her ears, and she turns blindly toward him. “You are not.”

“I can’t let you go--”

“This is not your time, Kitty. You can’t die here, for a future that you will never live through. You have—” He pauses, makes a broad, hopeless gesture. “You have a _life_ , one that you have to return to. I am— _we_ are going to get you home. That means that you are _not_ coming with us.”

“And,” Rachel adds, “if you die, Kate never comes back at all. I don’t know how that would affect the timeswitch. No one’s ever pulled this off before. If you die, she might be stuck in your body. Or she might snap back and die here. And we don’t know if she’s done yet.”

Piotr lets out a breath and passes a hand over his face, a soft _shhhk_ of metal on metal. “I wish I knew how she was doing,” he mumbles, and it’s so quiet that Kitty thinks she wasn’t supposed to hear it. Then he drops his hand and raises his voice to say, “We didn’t think it would take this long.”

“Well, what if _she’s_ dead?” Kitty snaps, and it’s cold and—and _mean_ , but someone has to say it. “What if she went and tried to stop an assassination and someone _shot_ her? I can still die if someone takes me off-guard, or—or if someone got one of those inhibitors on me. If I’m stuck here, I can’t just _watch_ you all die. You’re all I have _left_ , if I’m stuck here.”

“You are _not_ stuck here,” Piotr says before anyone else can interrupt, less like he’s responding to her and more like he’s trying to convince himself.

“You’re really not,” Rachel confirms. “I can’t reach Kate, not really. But I’ll know when the link between you breaks. This isn’t your world, Kitty. You don’t have to die for it.”

“Neither do _you_ ,” Kitty says desperately. “Ororo—Logan--”

“I’m old, kid.” Logan’s voice sounds just like it always has, rough and warm and a little wry, like he’s seen too much of the world not to see the humor in it. “I was old before you were born. I don’t even fuckin’ know how old I am anymore. If I die pulling this off, it’ll be okay by me.”

“There are still mutants running from the Sentinels,” Ororo adds. “We have the chance to help them, and to help Kate finish her task. I would not be sorry to die doing it.”

“ _Peter_.” Kitty turns on him, and she’s not sure what she’s looking for, but she’s not finding it in his face. He’s looking away from her, at a point on the ground some ten feet behind her, and he looks like her voice is hitting him like a slow drip of boiling water. “Look at me,” Kitty pleads. “What if Kate comes back and I let you all get killed while she was gone?”

“She will understand,” Piotr says, and his voice is all confidence, threaded through with hopelessness. “She will understand what we did, and why we did it, just like I—just like we understand that she may be unwriting our world, the good with the bad. I let her go, because it was what had to be done.” He glances up at her at last, and it’s not the slip of the tongue but the way he looks at her, the way his gaze locks onto hers like he’s spent his whole life with his head tilted at just that angle, that makes it click home. “I’ve known you a long time, Katya. I know you’ll stay behind, if we tell you that it’s what has to be done.”

He’s right. Kitty knows he’s right. She still turns away from him, tears in her eyes, and she nods wordlessly.

“Okay,” Rachel says. “This way.”

* * *

Once they’re out on the street again, Kitty grabs Rachel by the hand, and pulls her back a few steps, letting the others range ahead. Ororo has already killed another Sentinel, catching it offguard to bring lightning down onto its vulnerable neck, and they’re taking a breather in the loading dock of an abandoned restaurant while Logan does a cursory look at their next steps.

“Rachel,” Kitty says quietly. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

To her credit, Rachel doesn’t insult either of them by asking what Kitty means. She just sighs and scrubs both hands back through her cropped red hair, leaving soot smudged on one of her temples, and looks wearily at Kitty.

“I told him you were too smart for that shit. What tipped you?”

“Just—a lot of stuff. How long have they—we—been together?”

“Long time,” Rachel says on a heavy breath. “You were together when I met you, got married maybe twenty-five years back. Meri—Meredith—was born twenty-one years ago, then Mickey—Mikhail—eighteen years ago.”

“Mikhail,” Kitty repeats, turning the name over on her tongue. She remembers… “After Peter’s brother?” A nod. “And Meredith.”

“You said you liked it and you did all the work, so you got to pick. I think he was just so thrilled to death that he never thought to argue.” Rachel pauses. “You—know what happened to them?”

“He told me. No details.” Kitty holds up a hand, shakes her head. “I don’t want to know. Just—how old were they?”

Rachel’s lips press together in the corner of Kitty’s vision—Kitty can’t look at her, can’t look away from Piotr ahead of them, but she sees the way Rachel looks down, as if ashamed to admit it to her. “Meri just turned nine when the Sentinels caught us the first time. Four years later, Mickey was ten.” Kitty doesn’t know if that’s worse, losing them apart like that. It’s all shades of horror, losing children. 

She wonders what they looked like, whether they had her phasing or Piotr’s armor or something stranger, a mix of the two. She can’t imagine herself as a mother, but she knows how Piotr adores his little sister. He was probably a good dad.

“Why didn’t he _tell_ me?”

“I don’t know. Because he’s trying to worry himself into a shallow grave and has been since he was seventeen, probably. You should ask him.”

“He only talks to me when he can’t avoid it.”

Rachel laughs a little, fragile thread of sound that she muffles in a palm. “He’ll talk to you now. He just knows that he’s no good at lying to you.” Kitty can feel Rachel’s gaze on her, that _pushing_ of a telepath watching her closely, not trying to intrude but not quite reining themselves in, either. Then the pressure ebbs, and Rachel looks forward too. “You’re a lot like her,” Rachel says.

“I mean—probably.”

“You know what I mean. You’re just…sweeter.”

Kitty cracks a smile at that. She thinks she could get to be friends with Rachel, if she had time. “I feel like that’s an insult.”

“Well, we’re trying to make a world where it won’t be.”

On instinct, Kitty grabs Rachel’s hand again, and gives it a squeeze. “I’m sorry about Franklin. I wish…”

“He knew the risks,” Rachel says, and her voice _aches_ in a way that makes Kitty want to hug her again. But it’s not safe on the street, they don’t have time or space for softness right now. “And he did the wish granting, not me. I just throw stuff, is what Mom always said.”

“You just _throw stuff_.”

Rachel smiles, wistful. “Keeps me humble. It’s important to stay humble in my family.”

“Who--”

“Ah-ah,” Rachel says. “You’ll figure it out. You’re smart. But I’m not telling.” She gives Kitty’s hand a squeeze in return, and lets go. “I’ll yell at your future husband for you, though.”

Kitty wants to thank her, opens her mouth and everything, but Rachel slips out of range of an easy whisper before she can get the words out. She reaches Piotr and they exchange barely a handful of words, words that Kitty can just make out if she strains.

“I told you this wouldn’t last,” Rachel says, and claps Piotr on the arm, where she can reach.

“ _Da_ ,” Piotr murmurs.

Piotr stays put for a moment, head lowered, as Rachel’s hand slips away from his steel skin. Kitty can see Rachel adding something telepathically, in the way Piotr tips his head slightly and the way his shoulders tense, but she can’t possibly guess at what it might be.

Then Rachel gives a nod, and she’s moving forward at a steady jog to catch up with Logan, and Piotr—

Piotr takes a breath, so deep that Kitty can see his ribs expand and the muscles of his back flex, and turns to face her.

Kitty realizes, as quick and jarring as missing a step on a staircase, that she has no idea what to say to him. The twist of anxiety is an unwelcome change from the steady _tick-tick-tick_ of fear in her chest, clutching at her guts like she’s managed to leave something in there while phasing. She wrestles it down enough that she’s fairly sure she can talk, if called on to contribute to this conversation, but she sees the way Piotr’s lips twitch down at the corners, a flicker of guilt crossing his face before he manages to clear it.

“So,” Kitty says, a little weakly. She swallows, does her best to picture her Piotr in his place, to see the familiar friendly lines in this man’s features, and her voice comes out stronger—angrier—when she speaks again. “So. You left some stuff out, when we were talking.”

“I did,” Piotr admits. His voice is always quiet, outside of a fight, but now it’s so low that Kitty can _feel_ it, more than hear it. “You guessed?”

“You’ve got a good poker face,” she tells him. “Peter—you lied to me.”

“I just—didn’t tell you.” She can tell that he knows he’s splitting a pretty fine hair, with that defense, because he sighs and rubs his hands together, a series of ringing clicks as his thumb runs over his knuckles. “I hoped you would go home before you realized…what I had not said.”

“You didn’t want me to know? Why _not_ , Pete? Come _on_ , I’m not, like, subtle. This morning—my morning—I let you carry me around like a princess in the Danger Room. Probably even Scott knew—knows—damn.”

Piotr gives her a tiny smile, one that doesn’t touch his eyes. “Tenses get hard to manage with time travel.”

“Yeah,” Kitty says, waving him off with a sharp gesture. “But seriously, you _know_ that I already like you—my you—and Rachel says you and Kate have been married like twenty-five years.”

“Almost twenty-six.”

“So obviously I _still_ like you, or I probably wouldn’t have put up with you this long. So—what the hell, Peter?”

Piotr hesitates. He stays quiet, eyes on the ground, for so long that she almost expects him not to answer at all, to simply walk away and gamble that she’ll be gone within the hour anyway. It’s strange to see—he’s so different from her Piotr, so much older and grimmer, but they have the same look when they’re wondering about the odds of being able to escape a conversation.

Then he says, “You are thirteen, Katya. Kitty. If—if there was one thing I feared, when Kate went back to your time, it was that she would accidentally change things so that you never loved me. I am a selfish man. More than you know, yet. I almost asked her not to go, so that I could keep her. Keep you. But faced with you—you are a child, still. I could not have lived with myself if I thought I had tried to push you into it.”

It’s the longest speech she’s heard from him since waking up in this future. It might be a strong contender for the most words she’s ever heard Piotr speak at once. He delivers it in a flat, steady voice, stumbling over a few words, but never flinching, never breaking, with that tense uncontracted way he always talks when he’s stressed. His English is smoother and more casual now, relic of decades of practice, but he still sounds like he’s reading from a textbook when he gets upset. 

He doesn’t raise his eyes from the broken cement, like he’s confessing something awful.

It’s so— _not_ what Kitty expected that she’s silent for a long moment.

“Are you--” Piotr breaks off and laughs, a little hollow. “I sound like a child. Are you angry with me?”

Thank God for easy questions, Kitty thinks. “ _Yeah_ I’m angry with you, you _lied_ to me.”

“I am sorry that I lied.” Piotr finally looks up at her, studies her face. In the chaos, Kitty hasn’t thought until just this moment about the fact that he has decades of experience in reading her, and she’s known him maybe four months. That imbalance becomes obvious when he looks at her for barely a heartbeat before saying, “What’s wrong?”

“I just—I don’t know. That’s not what I thought you were going to say, about not telling me.”

Kitty’s not sure what she _was_ expecting, really. Well, no. She thought that it might be that he didn’t _want_ this to be their future anymore, that he might be hiding the truth from her so as to cut their personal timeline as short as Kate was cutting this grander one. It didn’t occur to her that he might have been afraid of _scaring her off_.

“Are you all right?” Piotr presses. It’s like he’s been given permission to refuse being diverted, now that she knows. Of course he has. He and Kate lost nearly their entire team, lost two children, went to prison together. She knows enough to be sure that a marriage doesn’t survive that unless everyone involved talks. 

The problem is, she’s not sure what else to say. He’s set her totally adrift, and she can’t even say why. She always knew Piotr was a good man, kind and—and _honorable_ , really. Always happy to be her white knight. Of course he’s been worrying himself into a knot over _protecting_ her.

Kitty reaches out without thinking, stands on her toes to catch Piotr’s shoulder and pull lightly on it. He goes, automatic, and Kitty wonders a little at how easily the strongest person she knows bends under her touch. She kisses him lightly on the cheek, where it dimples when he smiles, and he stands up looking bemused and not completely reassured.

“Thank you, Peter,” she says. “Kate is lucky to have you.”

He smiles, and it’s still not the broad grin she remembers from her Piotr, still sad and tired and more than a little confused, but it’s more real than any she’s seen from him.

“I am the lucky one,” he says, and it’s so sincere that it _aches_. “Come. The others are waiting, and we still have to get you home.” He pauses for a moment as Kitty steps up beside him, toward the ruined garage door of the loading dock, and then he adds, “I _am_ sorry. I didn’t want you to see this future.”

Kitty shoves her hands in the pockets of Kate’s jumpsuit, with the capital M on the breast. “I’ll live.”

“You will,” Piotr agrees. “But I still hoped…ah. It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re going to run off and get killed on a gamble,” Kitty says, and she thinks that she must sound like Kate, from the way he looks over at the grim tone in her voice. “So don’t you go lecturing me about staying safe. So I spent a few hours in the subways. Big deal. Calm down about it.”

“It’s important, Katya.”

“Yeah,” Kitty says, kicking a chunk of concrete out of her way. “I know. Kate’s never going to forgive me, when she comes back and you’re all dead.”

“She will understand,” Piotr says again, and Kitty lets out a sigh that feels like she’s poured out every last drop of emotion from her chest, leaving her glass-clear and empty.

“Yeah,” she says again, quieter. “She will.”

She will, because Kitty does. Kitty will, because Kate did, because they both do. Tenses really do get weird with time travel.

* * *

Kitty expects to be told that she and Rachel are going to hide out blocks from the Baxter Building. She’s resigned herself to it—barely. As long as she doesn’t think about it too much. But instead, with some careful maneuvering, they go without hitting another patrol all the way to the doors themselves, where a single Sentinel goes down under Ororo’s lightning before it can even gear up to fight them. Piotr forces the doors with less effort than Kitty uses to open a window, and Logan points them into what must have once been a decorative alcove, a waiting space. The bench that must have filled it is gone, but there are still marks on the floor where it was bolted down. Kitty stands just outside the alcove and looks around and tries not to tear up.

“This is good,” Ororo says. “When Kate returns, you will be close by, ready to come help us. The wall should hide you from the street, and with us upstairs, the Sentinels won’t be able to pick out your signatures so nearby.”

“Hey, kid, don’t look so grim,” Logan tells Kitty, grabbing her by the shoulder and giving her a rough shake, the same way he did just that morning, after Ororo was done yelling at her for being reckless. He’s still so much himself. “You’ll see us in no time.”

“Yeah,” Kitty says hopelessly.

Rachel mumbles something under her breath, leaning her shoulder and temple against the wall, and Logan snorts, letting Kitty go with a friendly tug on a curl that’s struggled free of her bun. “Good seeing you again, half-pint. So to speak.”

“You’re shorter than Kate,” Kitty says with a weak smile, and Logan huffs in offense, ignoring her.

“Just remember, kitten, all will be well as soon as Kate returns.” Ororo steps up to wrap an arm around Kitty’s shoulder, briefly, and Kitty closes her eyes. “All will be well.”

Kitty wonders how long it’s been since this Ororo lied to be kind. For Kitty, yes, Kate will come back and she’ll go home, where she’s hoping to hug anyone who stands still long enough and lie down in a comfortable bed and call her parents. Kitty will be fine. But saying that _all_ will be well—that’s just a blatant lie, and Kitty isn’t naïve enough to believe it.

Ororo steps back to join Logan, and he pulls her away to start inspecting elevator doors, and then it’s just Piotr, standing there.

Rachel pushes herself away from her wall and says, “I’m going—over there. Play nice.”

Kitty watches her go and says, “I wish I knew her.”

“You will,” Piotr says. “I promise. Rachel is—pervasive.” Kitty has no idea what that means, but he sounds amused, and Kitty smiles a little to hear it.

“You sure I can’t come with you?” It’s a weird thing to sound wistful about, but she can’t help it. It makes her sick to think of them going up there without her, it makes her feel like something intrinsic is rebelling against her, like she’s laid poison into her bones. Sure, she’s thirteen, and she doesn’t want to die here. But she’s never abandoned someone yet, not even to the Hellfire Club, and this—this feels like doing it for the first time.

“I promised to get you home,” Piotr says, and cracks a small smile of his own. “There is a very stubborn Russian who is definitely missing you by now.”

Kitty giggles, and chokes on it, and has to wipe at her eyes. She doesn’t know why they’re wet. She’s fine. She’s the only one of all of them who’s going to be fine. “I hope so. I like him.”

“He likes you too. It will take him a few years to notice how much, though. Organic steel makes for a very hard head.” Piotr’s smile fades, and he looks uneasy again. “I hope that you won’t feel that I—expect anything, if I give you some advice?”

“I came to the future and all I’ve gotten is nightmares. Some advice would be great.”

“Your Piotr is not lying about being unsure because of your age—or won’t be lying, or wasn’t lying, depending on whose timeline you like best.” Piotr makes a gesture as if to indicate his other self with some frustration. It’s the first time she’s heard someone call him that, Kitty’s Piotr. She files the distant twinge of warmth away for later examination, when she’s done being fine. “It is a good thing to worry about. But I am also very, very dense, and always have been. Don’t—don’t give up on him.”

“Okay,” Kitty says. “I’ll remember. And—Piotr?” Her throat closes sharply, and she swallows, closes her eyes and breathes. She doesn’t have anything that sounds remotely good. _Fight hard_ , maybe, but he always does, or _don’t die_ , but that’s a fantasy. _Be brave_ is on the tip of her tongue, because everyone could always use a little more bravery. She says, “I’ll see you soon.”

And he grins at her, broad and laughing, that dimple appearing in his cheek, and for the first time, even through the steel, Kitty realizes that Piotr will grow up to have laugh lines around his eyes. The knowledge should hurt, but it feels like sinking teeth into a cheek numbed with Novocaine. There’s nothing there but the taste of blood.

Kitty is going to be fine.

“I will see you soon,” he says, and then he’s gone.

As the elevator door closes, Kitty can hear Ororo remarking on how much she still hates confined spaces. It’s so—normal. If Kitty closed her eyes, she could imagine that they were standing in any other skyscraper, out in the city because they were bored and Warren was feeling like showing Kitty the sights and no one had wanted to be left behind. But the vast empty cold in her chest won’t let her pretend.

Rachel grabs Kitty by the hand, and pulls her down into the alcove, until they’re sitting on the floor. Rachel is tucked into the corner, eyes half-lidded, and Kitty curls up into the smallest ball she can, with a careful, precise six inches between them in all places. What she wants is to rest her head on Rachel’s shoulder, but—

She’s fine.

_//Rachel,//_ Kitty thinks at her. _//Are you watching them?//_

_//Yes,//_ Rachel says back. Her mental voice sounds as hollow as Kitty feels, and she cuts Kitty off before she can say another word. _//I won’t show you. Pete asked me not to.//_ Kitty projects a sharp question, a ripple of anger, and Rachel shakes her head.

And so Kitty sits. Rachel starts crying after not more than a few minutes, one hand pressed to her mouth to silence her gasping sobs and tears rolling steadily down her face.

_//Rachel, please--//_

Sitting here, listening to the distant sound of fighting, is like bleeding out slowly. The cold in Kitty’s chest is leaking through her veins, into her fingers and toes, as if she’s being pressed down into deep water. If she’s crying, she can’t tell.

“Rachel,” she whispers, and moving her lips is the hardest thing she’s ever done.

_//Logan and Ororo, they’re— Peter is fighting.//_ There’s a shattering boom from outside and overhead. The wall, Kitty thinks dimly.

_//Don’t leave him,//_ Kitty sends timidly across the link, toward the flame of Rachel’s mind.

_//I won’t, I won’t, he’s—God. So quickly.//_

Kitty doesn’t need to ask any questions. From a thousand miles away, she hears a sob wrench itself out of Rachel’s mouth, past her hand. Kitty closes her eyes and leans over, until her head is on Rachel’s knee, and Rachel puts her free hand in Kitty’s hair, Kate’s hair. The cold has gone solid, turned into ice, too heavy to move. Kitty doesn’t need to move. She just needs to lie here, and wait, and then she will be fine.

The wrenching twist, the sudden swallowing white, is a relief.

_//Who are you?//_ Kitty tries to say aloud, to a woman with lines around her eyes and a tired, triumphant smile. She’s wearing Kitty’s uniform, black and yellow, but she’s much older.

_//Be safe, kiddo,//_ Kate says, and kisses Kitty on the forehead, and—

* * *

“She’s coming around,” a voice says. “Kitten? Can you hear me?”

This time, Kitty is on something soft, that rumbles gently under her, and there is a hand stroking her hair, slow and steady.

“’Roro?” Kitty mumbles, opening one eye. It’s too bright—she has a headache.

Then Kitty jolts upright, so fast she nearly clips Ororo’s face with her forehead.

“Kitten, what--?”

Kitty cuts Ororo off by throwing her arms around the older woman’s neck, so tightly that it makes Ororo squeak before she hugs Kitty back.

“Kate?”

“No, it’s me,” Kitty mumbles into Ororo’s shoulder. “You’re okay!”

“ _Déjà vu_ ,” Kurt says from behind them, amused, and Kitty whirls on him. She’s never hugged Kurt before, she realizes, around the same time that she realizes she’s hugging him. He says something in startled German and pats her a little nervously on the back—she can’t blame him. His cheek is velvety against her temple, the silky texture of a shorthair cat. “Are you okay, _katzchen_?”

“I’m fine,” Kitty says, and lets him go before setting her sights on her next target. Logan receives her hug with an expression of long-suffering patience, but he’s as good and solid as his future self. Warren laughs a little when she grabs him next.

“What’s with the lovefest, kid?” Warren asks as she pulls away, ruffling her hair cheerfully. “Everything all right?”

“I just—”

“Is Kitty awake—” Piotr starts to say, slipping into the main cabin of the jet.

“Oh, God, _Peter_.”

To Piotr’s credit, he catches her as unflinchingly as ever, bending down to let Kitty wrap her arms around his neck.

“Are you okay?” Piotr asks, quieter than the others.

“I’m fine,” Kitty says, and bursts into tears. 

Piotr makes an alarmed noise and steers her carefully into a chair, sits her down and then kneels down so that he’s looking up at her. He has to—Kitty can’t make herself let him go, one shaking hand still clutching at his shoulder even as he pushes her into the chair. Ororo is behind her, stroking Kitty’s hair again, and Kitty shakes her head. She doesn’t even know how she’s supposed to explain.

_//You don’t have to,//_ Professor Xavier’s blessedly calm voice says into her mind. Then he’s speaking aloud and says, “Kitty has had a difficult day. Take your time, my dear, Kate kept us apprised of…events.”

_//I’m fine,//_ Kitty thinks back at him, but it sounds fragile, and the professor does her the courtesy of not calling her on the obvious lie. All the cold in her chest is gone, and in its place is Rachel’s voice saying _so quickly_. Kitty wants to sleep until she forgets that today ever happened, but first—

She needs to know. She has to gulp air and scrub at her face with a hand before she’s able to speak again, and her voice sounds ragged and wrecked. “Kate—what was she like?”

“Smart,” Logan says.

“Stubborn,” Warren adds. 

“Very, very tired,” Ororo says, raking Kitty’s curls out of her face where they’ve been stuck to her cheeks by her tears.

“She was a good leader,” Piotr says, looking worriedly into Kitty’s face. His face is open and bright, those blue eyes tracing her face closely, and his hair is jet black, and he doesn’t look at her like she’s anyone but herself. He has a hand over hers on his shoulder, fingers wrapped around her wrist like he’s trying to hold her steady, and doesn’t seem to mind that she’s probably bruising his shoulder with how hard she’s digging the tips of her fingers into the muscle. Kitty feels a fresh wave of tears rising in her throat, but swallows them down.

The professor hums thoughtfully, and says, “Kate Pryde is—will be? As delightful and admirable a person as Kitty Pryde is.” Kitty gives him a shaky, small smile.

“Did she do it? Did she change whatever she came back to change?” Kitty has to pause and breathe before she can say, “Our future—isn’t good, otherwise.”

“Well, we did save the senator,” Ororo muses. “And you’re back. So I hope so.”

“As cliché as it sounds, only time will tell,” Professor Xavier says, dry. “But for now, Kitty, let us assume that our future is as secure as anyone’s.”

“Okay,” Kitty whispers. “Okay.”

She closes her eyes in relief, and all at once, exhaustion seeps into her blood, spreading like ink through water. Suddenly her grip on Piotr is holding her up by main force, and then his hands close gently around her shoulders to steady her.

“Kitty? Katya?” That’s Piotr again, Kitty notes, all alarm. She should answer him, probably. “Are you all right?”

“I’m—I have a headache,” Kitty admits in a tiny voice, eyes still closed. Her head is pounding, and no wonder. It’s changed hands twice in a day. She fumbles a hand up to hold onto Piotr’s wrist, flesh and bone but still as sturdy as ever. “I’m so tired.” 

“Let her sleep,” the professor is saying, beyond the black weight settling over Kitty. “I expect that her day has been even harder than ours.”

“Of course,” Ororo says. And then, “Logan, get off the couch. Piotr, bring her over here.”

Being picked up is not a surprise, all things being equal. It’s even kind of a relief. Kitty could force her eyes open, walk the six steps across the cabin to collapse on the couch where she woke up, but her head aches and the light is too bright and—

And it’s nice. Piotr, her Piotr, isn’t as sure of how to carry her as his future self, but she’s safe with her head resting on his shoulder. Every bone in her body agrees on that much.

She’s asleep before he sets her down on the couch.

**Author's Note:**

> I have [a Tumblr,](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/) where I erratically post updates on the 50K behemoth of an X-Men Evolution fic that I've been working on since before I graduated college. Someday, it will go up on AO3 in all its self-indulgent glory, and then I will complain less about the X-Men movies.
> 
> (That's a lie, I'll never complain less about the X-Men movies. Do go read DoFP, though, it's a good comic, I have a whole speech about how it's a better onboarding point than the Dark Phoenix Saga.)


End file.
